


Sharpest Lives

by nevermindgrantaire



Series: She Keeps Me Warm [9]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Major Character Injury, Oreste à Jeun et Pylade Ivre | Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 00:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2712572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermindgrantaire/pseuds/nevermindgrantaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The barricade has fallen.<br/>Grantaire wakes up in the aftermath, alone and cold, and starts to search through the ruins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharpest Lives

 

 

 

 

 

Grantaire’s eyes flutter open accompanied by a throbbing headache and she winces and braces herself for the sounds of gunfire and shouts outside but…

There’s nothing.

There’s a moment, a tiny moment where she allows herself to hope. To hope that they might have won, to hope that they’re finally going to be free, to hope that she’ll see Enjolras finally in all her glory smiling and laughing because they finally made it.

But the silence eats at her mind.

The hope dies almost immediately, of course. They haven’t won.

She looks around her- the windows of the café she’s sat in are smashed out, smears of red across some of the fragments. Someone died there, or if not died then got hurt.

It’s a sobering thought and she stands up, swaying slightly.

Outside, the street is empty. The wind blows through the buildings and over the make-shift barricade that they had thrown together with anything that they could find. She closes her eyes and remembers the night before, sat around the barricade with everyone, keeping watch and snatching moments of sleep between the bouts of gunfire from the police officers on the other side.

Everything was warm, red, orange, light. She’d been hugged more than she ever had been in her life before that, falling asleep with her head pillowed in Joly’s lap and with her hand stroking Musichetta’s hair. She’d told Gavroche to go home, she remembers. And Eponine, too.

She remembers. Falling asleep with the sound of gunfire in her head, the crystal clear picture of Eponine falling back hard with a rose of blood blooming over the neckline of her t shirt, of Gavroche who should have been in school, who had a future, who could have got out of there if he'd only listened, tumbling from the other side of the barricade, two bullets buried deep in his shoulder and in his chest. Falling asleep with the image of Enjolras perched up on top of the barricade, keeping watch with Courfeyrac, a loaded gun hanging carelessly from her hand.

When she woke up in the night, she’d slipped away feeling like she wasn’t meant to be there, like she was trespassing on a private moment. A nonbeliever attending church.

Enjolras had still been sat alone, keeping guard.

She liked to think that she’d seen her go.

Now it’s cold, and desolate. And silent. That’s what woke her, she thinks. She’s not drunk any more- worryingly sober. She doesn’t know what to do. Her hands flutter around uselessly, searching for something to do. She hopes against hope that her friends are still alive, that they were taken alive, arrested. But she has never been one to hold on to hope.

Fragments of her dream are coming back, but there’s one insistent part that echoes over and over, trying to convince her that it’s not a dream. Waking up in the café still hazy with alcohol, with the sounds of shouts and rapid gunfire and then a moment of silence and a voice shouts. “Long live the revolution!” That’s Prouvaire’s voice, she thinks and then there are four loud cracking gunshots and the voice cuts out. She’d let herself slowly slide back into slumber, trying to convince herself it was a dream.

Her feet stumble on the cobbled pavement. Prouvaire. Dead.

There is nothing she can say or do for a moment, her mind going to static and her heart feeling like it’s about to burst out of her chest.

It’s hardly the best time to be seeing the light, so to speak because it's dark as fuck out there with the sky overcast and sending down a light film of drizzle over everything, but she can see so clearly now how Enjolras sees it, how she knows in her heart that she’s right.

Eponine. Prouvaire. Gavroche.

A child, a girl who hadn’t even meant to be there and the sweetest soul that she’d ever met.

Maybe somewhere in the ruins there’s a survivor, she thinks desperately but she doesn’t let herself look towards the barricade because she can see out of the corner of her eye the body of someone, she doesn’t want to know who, hung lifeless upon one of the chairs.

Joly, her mind supplies because who else? None of the others are that tiny. Were.

She panics, her head snapping around and her eyes desperately seeking someone. Anyone.

Where’s Enjolras?

She’s alive, her mind thinks determinedly, she has to be.

I love her, she thinks. She has to be.

Her eyes alight on the Musain, the windows smashed out and in the silence of everything else there are noises from there.

Shouts. Please, no. She thinks. Please.

There isn’t the thud of a body hitting the floor because she’s too far away for that but she imagines it and it makes her wince. Her cheeks are wet, tears tracking through the dirt and dust, but she can't pinpoint the exact moment that she started crying.

She's lightheaded, disassociated.

She walks towards the building, her feet carrying her through no will of her own.

The door hangs off its hinges, propped open with the slumped over body of one of her friends. Feuilly, her mind supplies unhelpfully. She whimpers out loud. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

With one hand, she reaches out and closes his eyelids for him, pulling up the strap of his top so that it covers the strap of his binder because she knows how much that used to annoy him. Maybe he’ll wake up, she thinks irrationally, and checks his pulse even though she can see that his eyes are glassy as she gently nudges them shut, his skin turning grey. Around the wound his blood has gone black. He’s so cold. So cold.

Suddenly she has to fight the urge to throw up, whirling away and retching dryly into a dusty corner.

There are footsteps above and her eyes widen. Someone could be there.

Up the stairs, then, feeling like a ghost. There are police in the room, their backs to her. She remembers Enjolras refusing to give her a gun and can't bring herself to think what she could do with it right now if she had one. She could do to them what they had done to all her friends. She knows she could.

But then they fade out into static in her mind because that's when she sees her. You're alive!, she wants to blurt. You're alive, never ever leave me again, I need you, I need...

Enjolras is still beautiful, a shining sun goddess. Her long blonde hair is thick with dirt and blood, a wound on her forehead running down in to her eye, pooling in her eyelashes, clumping them together stickily. Her cheeks are flushed, her teeth barred in pain as she sucks in hollow breaths.

A soldier takes a step forward and she freezes because now she knows what they're going to do.

“Go on, then.” Enjolras' light has almost burned out, but Grantaire still finds her captivating, a sarcastic smile twisting her lips bitterly. Before she knows what she's doing, she takes a step towards her, and then another, and another, faster.

"Stop! Wait!" She calls, as her foot catches on something and she stumbles and falls hard into Enjolras' side. She doesn't look down, doesn't want to know what she stumbled on. "I'm one of them! Long live the republic, long live the republic!" She rights herself at Enjolras' side, staring up at her with eyes wide. She's shaking, she realises, and she doesn't care anymore.

Her eyes force themselves to look around the room. Combeferre.

Courfeyrac. Bossuet. Dead.

It's ok though. She won't be without them for long.

One officer steps forward. "Ready?"

Grantaire's eyes fly wide with panic. "Do you permit it?" she babbles, looking up at Enjolras like she holds the secrets of the universe in her gaze, trying too hard to get the words out right.

Enjolras smiles, something R has never seen directed at her like that before. She's perfect like this even though she knows she's lost, even though it's all about to be over and her smile is like a bubble of peace and Grantaire luxuriates in it as long as she can. She feels something bump against her hand and when she unclenches her fingers and Enjolras takes them and wraps them up in her grasp she can't help but smile back, aching and tired and terrified to die but not afraid to die like this. Not regretting this.

Before the shots fire out, there's a warm brush as Enjolras swipes her thumb over the back of her hand, and that's the last thing she feels before she's being hurled back into the darkness, keeling over at Enjolras' feet, tumbling down and down and down and

 

**


End file.
